Thursday, March 17

Is it a slasher? A Die Hard clone? Nope. Jim Wynorski's Hard to Die is a movie in which boobs squeak like dog chew toys when squeezed. Basically a skin-oriented sequel/remake of Wynorski's previous Sorority House Massacre II of the same year with many of the same actresses and Peter Spellos reprising the killer(?) Orville Ketchum character. When looking at this as something that would play along side Anna Nicole Smith's acting opus Skyscraper (1996) on late night Cinemax, it's a decent bit of voluptuous vixen fluff. Although those looking for a straight-up horror or action flick will probably be disappointed as those claims are trumped up marketing.

According to an interview in John McCarthy's book The Sleaze Merchants, Wynorski was approached by Roger Corman's wife to "secretly" shoot a quickie in Corman's Concorde studios while she and her husband were on vacation. The screenplay was written in three days and an initial version of the film shot in one week without Corman's knowledge. A surprised Corman loved the result so much he requested Wynorski shoot the film again and make it even more outrageous. The original title was Tower of Terror.

New Horizons VHS cover states an R rating while the cassette label states Unrated with an 81 minute runtime. The IMDB says the MPAA granted the film an NC-17 at 77 minutes. New Concorde's DVD splits the difference with an "R" at 81 minutes. Unsure what's correct; there isn't anything that wouldn't fall outside the bounds of a plain 'ol "R" either way. True to the marketing falsehoods, the two middle stills on the back and spine aren't from the film and the official trailer has footage also not in the film (@ 0:39-0:43 and the building explosion/tunnel fire stream).